earthbeat

Hey,

Been reading about global warming and the effects it all might have.  Pretty scary stuff, and it seems that not only are we probably approaching the point where rebalancing the atmosphere is impossible, but the effects on the hydrosphere are progressing more rapidly than projected even a few years ago.  It’s all inevitable, maybe.  Floods, oceans reclaiming the land, superstorms and hurricanes, seismic disturbance, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis – increases in all these events are becoming more likely with each passing day.

People are amazing; both the people who can carry on, business as usual, with all the mounting evidence, and those who refuse to accept that change is not too late, that measures can be taken to lessen or control the future which is becoming less and less hypothetical.  I can read articles about it, then phase it out of my head; if I really believed in it all, and could accept it, the rational thing to do would be to campaign for change.  And stock up on tinned goods and cat food, look for high ground, maybe build a big boat.  I don’t do any of that stuff, though.

It’s difficult to imagine that anything one person, or a thousand people, or even a billion people could do would have any effect on something so colossal.  But even small variations can make a change on a global scale; and we can’t know what tiny action might have an irrevocable effect.  There have been studies that show seismic activity can be linked to loading and unloading of winter snowfall, or small earthquakes being controlled by the timing of rainfall, and even the daily variations in atmospheric pressure modulating the amount of slip in landslides.   Microcosmic variations definitely have macrocosmic consequences.

Eventually, the earth will change beyond what we know.  Glaciers might advance, turning the earth into a giant snowball, locking down seismic shifts; or temperate regions could become scorched and baking.  Change is inevitable, and nothing is eternal – everything falls apart, everything gets fucked up.  It’s liberating in a way.  We should do our best, concentrate on the small things we can affect; but also accept that every system, from single-cell organisms to the biosphere, is alive and entropic, and will change, and evolve, and eventually fail.

“In 2001, UK GPS expert Geoff Blewitt, and his co-authors, published a revolutionary new model in the pages of the journal Science, for the wholesale deformation of the planet.  Using GPS technology to measure millimetre-scale movements of the Earth’s surface, Blewitt’s team from the University of Nevada and the UK’s Newcastle University was able to recognize a seasonal cycle that involved our world changing shape in the course of a year.  The extraordinary result revealed by the study is that, rather like a beating heart, the Earth changes systematically and repeatedly, with each ‘Earthbeat’ taking 12 months.  During the course of a single ‘beat’ the northern hemisphere contracts, reaching a peak in February and March, at the same time as the southern hemisphere expands.”

How cool is that?  The earth is living, pulsing, keeping its rhythm.  It might be – no, it will be – interrupted; arrythmia, tachycardia, bradycardia, cardiac arrest; the earth has gone through these things over millions of years and it is inevitable that it will again.  It is inevitable.  Nothing which is done will stop this; the most which can be done is palliative.  On the other hand, probably any damage that is done can be corrected – over hundreds of thousands of years, the earth will correct its own rhythm, and find a way to continue beating.

Focus on the small things, taking the next step, listening to the rhythm of your life and heart – “You gotta dance” as you were fond of saying.  Until the dance stops, do your best, and “your best will always be good enough.”

Miss you loads.

Love,

Jim

The quote was from ‘Waking the Giant’ by Bill McGuire

what is essential is invisible to the eye

Hi Marisa,

I’ve been carrying on transcribing the scrapbooks that you left behind.  It’s taking quite a bit longer than I thought it would, partly because the sections in Japanese are not something I can do very easily, but mostly because almost every section brings back memories or associations.  Some of them are happy, some are sad; but all of them are warm, and bring me back to you.  It’s like walking into an empty room, but seeing a book on the table with a cup of tea and plate of biscuits next to it.  Someone has just been here, and they’ll be back anytime to pick up where they left off.

I don’t feel like I’m intruding any more when I read the writing you left behind.  I don’t think you mind me reading it.  I don’t feel as if I’m scavenging through your life; I feel like Indiana Jones deciphering clues that lead to a mythical treasure, or a scientist tracking down an elusive element which can only be seen by the effects it has.  Your stories “have holes”, to quote Kristin Hersh; I can never capture or quantify what you are, but I can see the shape from everything you’ve left behind.

I feel ashamed.  Everything that you did for me, all the ways that you supported me, and the countless times and ways that I imposed on you; and where was I when you needed me?  I hope that I gave you at least some support and joy in return.  I should have done so much more.  I think everyone feels like that when they lose someone.  Regret at unspoken words, and missed opportunities to listen, and just to be with the person.  Nothing huge or life changing; it won’t appear in any history books or be mentioned on the news; but it can still mean so much to someone.

People help each other in ways they don’t realise, sometimes.  Like a plant questing for the sun, we reach for the people we love and admire, and gain warmth and light from them; they help us grow, root and leaf.  We may never touch or understand each other, but something essential is passed between us.  And straining to reach each other is how we help each other, how we gain strength.  Knowing that we are in someone’s thoughts is water to the soul and shelter from the elements.

I wish I could have been a stronger sun for you, and shone more brightly.  I hope you know that I never stopped trying to reach you, even when we were on different sides of the planet.

You’ve gone.  The light you received wasn’t strong enough to help you survive.  I can’t stop reaching for you though, and I never will.  You may not be in these skies anymore –  I wonder where you’re travelling? – but your distant beams of pale starlight now provide, will always provide, celestial navigation.

Love you,

Jim

kind of deep

So…consciousness is a strange thing.  It’s like building a shack in the middle of a vast desert, or a tiny island floating on a huge ocean.  We think we’re so in control, but our subconscious is always there, and can swamp our tiny efforts at self creation in an instant.  When we sleep, there’s a battle as we struggle to hold onto control and keep our sanity; because without the lies we tell ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to get through the day, let alone pay the bills and stuff like that.

Sleep has been good for me (mostly), but waking up has been hard.  I think I might prefer life in my subconscious, but realising that it’s not ‘real’ can be a horrible way to wake up.  I remember when I flew to Japan in December, I was sitting between two American soldiers – the woman was heavily pregnant and sitting on the aisle, and I guess the guy just wanted to be able to look out the window.  Anyway, I slept.  And when I woke up, I was looking straight at the woman and gave her the biggest, slowest, most heartfelt smile.  Which slipped, cracked, and dissolved when I remembered where I was and where I was going.  I don’t know what the woman thought, hope I didn’t freak her out too much…

I don’t remember what I was dreaming, but it felt real and safe and warm, like I was in the arms of love.  Is that what they mean, when they say that you will always have the people you love close to you, even after they die?  It doesn’t seem too bad, unless you have to get through the day and pay the bills and stuff like that.  We have consciousness as a filter so we can think about fairly limited things and keep functioning in the world; otherwise we’d just spend all our time gawping like acid heads at all the miraculous things around us (I think Terry Pratchett wrote something like that, can’t remember where I read it).

There’s another thing they say (who are they anyway?): sleep is like a little death.  Maybe that’s what happens when you die – you plunge into your subconscious and you find everything you lost, and you meet everyone you had a connection with.  Surely nothing is lost for ever; I picture a dusty warehouse with rows of shelves stretching as far as the eye can see, disappearing into the shadows.  (Seems like I might have seen something like that on the X-Files…).  When you die, the lights are turned on, the shadows start to dance, and your ghosts come to greet you.  Here’s the thing though: everything comes out, good, bad, mean-spirited, generous, sad, hilarious, golden moments and wasted opportunities.  What have you done all your life except create heaven or hell?  Because no matter how we struggle with our subconscious, it will rise up like the sea and swamp us at some time.

When people die, we keep them with us through our memories.  But when people die, maybe they take a part of us with them.  Do I exist somewhere in your warehouse, have I come out to dance with you in a world where there’s no struggling to keep on a mask (or having to pay bills and stuff)?  I hope so.

the endless spiral is broken

I’ve been meaning to write to you for a while.  I wasn’t going to write anything about mama here, just ’cause I thought it might not be what you’d want to hear.  Still, she’s really surprised me, and left me in a state of…I’m not quite sure.  Just when you think you’re used to her, she ups the ante spectacularly.  Quote of the day: ”I found myself crying a bit this afternoon.  I must be more upset than I thought.  Or maybe I’m just tired.”  Classic.  I don’t know what your reaction is, but mine was mixed: short laugh of disbelief, total fury, wanting to tell her to fuck off, resignation.  Anyway, this is the third day that I’ve spoken to her, and it’s just been getting more outrageous each day.  I’ll tell you about it later, and we can add it to the big book of mama’s quotes.

I’ve been thinking about a poem by Philip Larkin called An Arundel Tomb.  It’s about how history is written to suit the time.

And up the paths   

The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.   

Now, helpless in the hollow of   

An unarmorial age, a trough

Of smoke in slow suspended skeins   

Above their scrap of history,   

Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into   

Untruth.

It doesn’t matter how people remember.  As much as I love hearing your friends talk about you, and I feel as if I’m getting closer to you when I talk to them, there will be people who simply won’t remember you in the way that I do; who will, frankly, remember untruth.  What can you do? What’s important to me is what I remember and feel, and getting angry about people who should know better isn’t going to solve anything.

In a way, though, I feel grateful to mama.  What I was meaning to write was probably too painfully sentimental for you to appreciate.  You never did get my love of rom-coms, and I wouldn’t want to subject you to anything with remotely that kind of vibe.  Anger and morbid humour is probably more your cup of tea.  You’d probably tell me it’s a simple Jungian or Freudian displacement thing or something.  Maybe I’ll write mama a thank you card.
Still, I’ll probably lapse back into sentimentality next time I write.  As always, please be patient with me, and don’t take the piss too much.

Love,

Jim